


just a word

by cowboy_casey



Category: Unus Annus - Fandom
Genre: Dysphoria, F/M, Internalized Transphobia, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Misgendering, Nonbinary Character, Trans Character, for the first bit. before she figures it out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:15:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27912862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboy_casey/pseuds/cowboy_casey
Summary: It's just nail polish. It's not that deep.(It is that deep. About five hundred times that deep. TheMariana Trenchof "that deep." She doesn't know how she didn't figure it out before.)
Relationships: Amy Nelson/Ethan Nestor, Mark Fischbach/Amy Nelson, Mark Fischbach/Amy Nelson/Ethan Nestor, Mark Fischbach/Ethan Nestor
Comments: 64
Kudos: 222





	1. nail polish

It started with nail polish. 

Well, not really - it’s always been there, an ever-present sense of _wrongness_ that makes his skin crawl and heartbeat stutter -

But he likes to pretend it’s the nail polish’s fault, so it started with the nail polish. 

Mark had seen Ethan’s nails - shiny in the studio lights and pretty on his hands - and felt an odd sense of longing he knew he probably shouldn’t have. Felt the same longing when Amy’s nails would scratch along his back, bright colors glinting in the dim light of their room in between her ceramics projects. Started to feel it when browsing through nail art - a new guilty pleasure of his - or lurking in the nail polish aisle of a store before inevitably leaving more frustrated and confused than before. 

Eventually the intrusive thought became an ever-present want in the back of his mind. He’d think about it in his down time, when he would scroll through hundreds of different designs on Instagram, or Pinterest, or wherever the fuck (he’d lost count of how those hours were spent by now). The trips to the cosmetics aisle of the store would last longer, be more frequent - sometimes he’d even _touch_ the bottles. 

But that was - that was _weird_. He was being weird. Men didn’t really… wear nail polish. 

Sure, a ton did, and they all pulled it off (god Mark wished he could be one of them), but they all had a certain… something about them. Ethan - one of the many men Mark knew _personally_ who could pull it off - had something about him. 

Granted, he was pretty much a certified twink at this point (though you didn’t hear it from Mark), but there was just something else he had that Mark _didn’t_. 

He stopped thinking about it when he stumbled upon a comment talking about the femininity Ethan had compared to Mark, particularly in his hands, and spent an entire day in bed, too exhausted to even entertain the idea of getting up.

It wasn’t like Mark was upset about it - that would be absurd. Unfathomable. Weird. He just… wished he could wear nail polish. And seeing other people _basically_ say he couldn’t hurt. That’s all it was. 

Who did they think they were, anyway? Policing him on what he could and couldn’t wear based on something as silly as his gender. It was - stupid, and immature, and irrational that that’s what he thought was happening. 

Still, he found himself in the nail polish aisle anyway, glaring at the innocuous colors with misdirected spite coursing through his veins like red bull through a teen boy. 

“Can I help you?” a soft, _feminine_ voice asks. “If you have something you’re looking for I can point you there, or give you a recommendation?” 

So, he had maybe been there a while, just staring at the small bottles. And by “while”, he thinks it may have been somewhere close to the half-hour range. It was fine. Normal people did this all the time. 

Embarrassed, he turns to face her slowly, almost certain the heat on his face is somehow spreading throughout the whole store, because, wow, did it get hot in here? “Uh. I - uh.” 

Amused by his eloquent display of his total control over the English language, the employee just directs her attention to the vast array of colors and brands - because apparently there’s several different brands that all have different costs and colors and quality. It makes sense, if he thinks about it for more than one second - everything has variety, of course - but there’s just so _many_ that it’s kind of overwhelming his senses, and her running through each different one at lightning-speed is not helping this fact. 

“I’ve lost you, haven’t I?” she deadpans, laughing at his slow nod (which isn’t meant to be funny, by the way, he’s just really fucking overwhelmed). “That’s okay - men usually don’t get it right off the bat. It’s a lot.” 

And - that shouldn’t feel as weird as it does. It should not feel like an old acquaintance calling him by the wrong name, or a shoe just half a size too small, or when he wakes up and his pants have shifted slightly to the right, so the inner seam stretches uncomfortably over his hip and the waistband bunches up awkwardly, or a million other shitty metaphors for something feeling _not quite right_. 

It shouldn’t feel not quite right. 

Granted, it always has, just a little, but for some reason today it hits him like a brick to the foot. 

“I think I want something subtle,” he rushes out, instead of voicing any of the internal screaming going on inside his head, “you know - for like, ‘I want to paint my nails but I don’t want anyone to make a big deal out of it.’” 

The employee pauses at that, then moves to hover over a section of solid colors - blacks, beiges, pinks, and whites. “Shy girlfriend, I get it. What color does she usually wear?” 

Well, that’s an easy enough question. He hasn’t worn an outfit without something black in a long time. 

“Black,” he says, a little confidence returning to his voice now that they’re in familiar territory, “uh, sh-she wears black.” 

Humming, she picks up a few bottles of black nail polish, flipping them over a few times before moving onto the next one. “Don’t we all?” she jokes. His gaze flickers down to her pants - black ripped jeans (is that even allowed here?) - and he cracks a small smile. 

Finally, she seems to have settled on a bottle, and hands it to him gingerly as though she thinks he’ll chuck it on the floor as soon as she relinquishes her control over it. 

Maybe she’s not too far off, though - his hands are shaking pretty badly. Because of the cold, of course, there’s nothing weird about this. Just a dude getting nail polish. 

Heart speeding up at the reminder that the black polish is for him, he quickly stutters out a thank you and speeds over to the self-checkout, practically jamming his money into the machine and running out of there fast enough he’s _sure_ at least two people thought he was shoplifting. The drive home isn’t much better, but at least he’s alone for that portion, and thankfully manages to avoid getting pulled over. 

“Hey!” Amy calls once he enters the door. 

“Hey!” He replies, thumb rubbing nervously over the smooth bottle in his pocket as he books it to the bathroom, leaving her alone and confused on the couch. 

The door closes sharply behind him, and he barely even thinks about how he’s going explain this to Amy before he’s yanking the bottle up and out into the open. 

His forbidden desire finally sees the light. 

It’s surprisingly easy, getting set up. He takes the acetone out from the bottom left drawer right behind the box of tampons, just where he _knows_ it is because he’s been staring at it every so often for the better part of a month, gets the q-tips out from the cabinet, shakes the nail polish like he _knows_ he needs to, and opens it with relative ease. 

It’s actually staring at the small brush inside the bottle, dripping with black polish, that’s the hard part. 

He’s already come this far. He already has the polish, he already committed to this. It would be wasteful to stop now. 

But - what if people judge him? What if they point out that _something_ he doesn’t have - the missing piece of this whole fucking puzzle he’s been near-obsessing over for an embarrassingly long time now, considering the answer is probably staring him in the face. Mark’s not sure he could handle that. 

The drip collecting on the edge of the brush falls, and he watches it fall back into the bottle. He’s being so stupid right now. 

Taking a deep breath and reminding himself that he’s had his nails painted before (painfully ignoring that it was always for content and never just for himself), he picks up the bottle cap again, and paints a thick streak onto his left pointer finger. 

It’s one and a half hours later before he comes out, black polish messily applied to his nails and staining the skin around it, but he’s so _happy_ that it really doesn’t matter one bit. He finally did it. Finally gave into that hidden little want worming its way into his ear like a worm to an apple, and he doesn’t regret it one bit. 

Until he passes by a mirror and sees just how much the black polish stands out compared to his normal shade, _au naturel_. 

“Fuck,” he whimpers, regret immediately slamming into him like a tidal wave. And, fuck indeed - he had wanted this so badly. He had wanted to be able to paint his nails a pretty shade, without it standing out too much, or without anyone even _noticing_ , honestly. But he was an idiot and chose the one color that would stick out like a sore thumb. 

Amy must have heard him finally emerging from the bathroom, because she rounds the corner quickly with a concerned furrow to her brow that only has his heart thrumming in his chest with a nervous energy he’s never felt before, leaving it crackling at his fingertips and waiting for a vent. “Mark! Are you okay? You just rushed off, and I wanted to give you space, but -” she stops short when her eyes meet his hands, and he quickly whips them behind his back so she’ll stop looking. 

Fuck, he had wanted to wipe it off before anyone saw. 

“Oh,” she hums. Her face smooths over, and she shifts back on her heels, reminding them both of how tight he had been strung. “Oh, you just painted your nails. I thought - I thought you’d, like. Done something bad.” 

“No! No, I didn’t - wait, _just_ painted your nails?” The gentle dismissal has something else curling around his throat - a kind of sadness, almost, he wasn’t expecting. This is what he had wanted, right? For people to just brush it off - to not make it into something larger. 

Still, it feels a little like spending all night studying for a test that would never happen. _Thank fuck_ , of course, but all of that wasted effort deserved some kind of recognition. 

Amy cocks a brow at his strange behavior, but ultimately tosses it aside with a shake of her head. “Yeah? It looks nice, by the way. Anyway - are you okay? You just kinda rushed off…” 

“I’m fine,” he chokes out, around the stupid, stupid something curling around his throat and blocking his airway, “just had something on my mind, sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m not upset or anything, if that’s what you thought.” 

“A little. Thank you for being honest, though.” With nothing left to say, they both hesitate in the darkened hallway - which Mark is just now noticing, because apparently the sun had set while he was in the cramped little bathroom - fiddling with their hands or looking around at the walls. “Um… you could have asked me, you know. I would’ve helped you,” Amy finally says, still not quite looking at him directly. He tries to ignore how the missed eye-contact feels like a rejection, and tilts his head questioningly. “I mean, it looks great, for your first try, but…” She coughs, then trails off. “Uh, yeah. I could help you out. And I have other colors if you - wanted to experiment or something?” 

“I… that would be great, Ames. Thanks.” Mark pointedly ignores the heat blossoming on his cheeks, too (he’s ignoring a lot lately. He ignores that.), and gives her a shy smile. 

“Sure! Of course!” There’s something new in the way she looks at him - a sort of questioning stare failing to be as polite as she’s probably trying to make it - and he quickly looks down at his hands. “They do look very pretty, though. Especially on you.” 

“Thank you,” he murmurs. A fuzzy warmth envelops him from the compliment, and deciding one more on the list couldn’t possibly hurt, he ignores the nagging urge to figure out _why_ that means so much to him. 

It’s a couple days later when someone else notices. 

Granted, he’s only been around the dogs and Amy in that period, and the dogs don’t quite understand human concepts such as calculus, tax fraud, and nail polish, so it makes sense it took a little bit. Still, Mark’s glad for the small reprieve of worry, and for the chance to actually get used to what having painted nails entails. 

He likes it, he decides. It’s fun, and Amy’s right - it looks pretty. 

Ethan came over that Saturday, as he does most Saturdays by now per their unofficial-but-pretty-official routine, bearing takeout and an abnormally rambunctious Spencer. 

“Fuck, Mark would you come here and help me with the bags, please!” Ethan calls from the front door. Mark’s already there, having heard the jingle of his key set and anticipated his arrival like a dog, and quickly snatches the two bags Ethan’s holding out. In the commotion, he completely forgets about the thing he’s been stressing over for a month or so now, and misses the way Ethan’s eyes widen a fraction when they land on his nails. 

“Damn, what did you get? This is enough to feed an army, or our dogs” Mark jokes, carrying the bags to the kitchen. Ethan follows behind once he’s herded Spencer inside, and the younger man leans against the counter once all of the takeout is safely put on the counter. 

“Nah, Chica would eat it all herself - don’t give me that look, you know she would!” And he’s right, of course, Chica would absolutely gobble down the entire buffet before the other two dogs knew what had even happened, so Mark lets out a snort and gets to unpacking. 

Ethan speaks again a minute later, when Mark is taking out the burritos. “I didn’t know you painted your nails,” he hums, picking at his own cracked and flakey polish. It’s almost gone at that point - Mark knows from how often he’s been staring at it - and almost instinctively his eyes go over to look at it. 

“Uh, yeah,” he flinches slightly at the obvious waver in his voice, and clears his throat. Ethan obviously noticed - he’s peering at him cautiously, hands hovering at his sides as though there’s going to be some physical threat, separate from the raging storm inside Mark’s mind. Something he can actually deal with. “Yeah, I did it on Wednesday.” 

“They look nice.” Though his tone is carefully neutral, Mark can tell that he means it, and he gives the younger man a small smile. Ethan glances down at his nails again as he unpacks the bags (god Mark hopes he can’t see the small tremble in his fingers) and nods again, smiling widely. “They’re surprisingly neat.” 

“Thank you. Um - was the soggy burrito yours?” 

Not mentioning the change in topic, Ethan simply grabs the styrofoam box, making a reference to “no soggy bottoms” and sitting down at the table. Mark kind of wants to cry for some reason, but he pushes the sudden lump in his throat down and away, and calls out for Amy. 

Once everyone has sat down at the table, they dig into their food, passing around sauces and side dishes with practiced ease. Casual banter flows easily, and Mark almost forgets about the nail thing. 

Almost. “Oh, Mark your nails are chipped! It’s only been, like, three days. I can re-do them for you tonight, if you want?” Amy tsks at the chipped black polish - even though it’s not nearly as bad as Ethan’s, he would like to point out - and gently pushes aside the coleslaw he had been trying to hand to her to grab onto his hand. 

“Oh, so did you paint them?” Ethan asks. “They look really nice.” 

“No, Mark did. And yeah, they are really pretty.” 

Flushing at the praise, he takes a jerky sip of his water to cool down, and tries to ignore how ecstatic a simple word could make him feel. He’s been trying to ignore it for days with no progress, but twenty-first time’s a charm, right? It’s just a stupid _word_ \- no different from “nice” or “good” or even “handsome”. But it still makes something special flutter in his chest - a certain kind of happy he’s only felt a few times. That scares him.

Ethan must notice the blush - honestly, Mark’s not sure how anyone _couldn’t_ , it feels like it’s radiating out of him just like at the cosmetics aisle - because he tilts his head curiously and gives him a crooked smile. “Yeah,” he says, pointed gaze feeling like he’s staring into Mark’s very _soul_ , “they are really pretty.” 

Mark simply takes another sip of his water and pulls his hand away. So what if the word “pretty” makes little butterflies flutter around his chest, and fills him with a kind of euphoria that leaves him feeling equal parts amazing and queasy? It’s just a word. It’s just nail polish. There’s no deeper meaning. It’s fine. 

He takes another bite of his salad, and the conversation continues as normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aha,,, ignore me starting a new fic lmao  
> In My Defense, i have like seven projects i'm working on currently. i've only posted three of them, including this one 
> 
> anyway !! as always, i'm gonna try my best to be realistic and sensitive - if there's anything that's out of place, or just straight-up Wrong or offensive, please don't hesitate to let me know! i'd Hate to portray something wrong or spread any misinformation. 
> 
> thank you for reading this far !! it really means a lot to me and i Love you /p   
> hope y'all are coping well and staying hydrated if you can <3


	2. chapstick

It doesn’t _end_ with the nail polish, is the thing.

He could have just had a one-off experience - just a one-time hyperfixation on nail polish before it became a skeleton in his closet forever. Hell, he’d even been fine if he _kept_ painting his nails, so long as it was the only “not exactly a societal standard for men” hobby he had picked up.

But for some reason it didn’t pan out like that, and he ends up amassing a collection of small, not-quite-masculine items.

Amy pulls away from him, lips leaving his and practically forcing him to follow them as she moves back. She might’ve said something along the lines of “wait,” but it’s muffled in his mouth, and she surges back towards him.

Finally, she moves away again, this time putting a hand on his chest to signify it’s for real, at least for the time being. It doesn’t stop him from putting a hand on her waist and letting out a small whine though, and she laughs at his desperation. “Hold on,” she breathes, smile still clear in her voice. “Your lips - they’re _really_ chapped, honey.”

“So?” He pushes forward again, glad it’s only something as small as chapped lips keeping him from her gentle warmth, but she gently puts up her hand again.

“It’s not fun for me,” she explains. Her eyes keep darting to his mouth, so he’d like to contest that statement, but Amy suddenly becomes a psychic (or just knows him really, really well) and cuts him off before he can. “Go put on some chapstick or something, geez.”

“Chapstick?” he parrots. Mark hasn’t worn chapstick in years - and probably not more than a couple times in his _life_. Forgive him if he didn’t exactly have a tube of the stuff at the ready, or even at all.

“Yeah, you know, for _chapped_ lips? Here, you can borrow mine.” Amy hops off the bed to retrieve one of her many chapsticks (he’s seen them before - all lined up neatly in one of her drawer things on the vanity) and his hand drags along the exposed skin of her waist as she does, letting him know that whatever was _going_ to happen will likely not be happening now.

He catches the stick effortlessly when she tosses it, and reads over the label as she sits back down. “Cucumber and mint? Won’t that, like, burn or something?”

“No, it has a nice little tingle! Like when they put cucumbers over your eyes at a spa or something.” Mark doesn’t have enough experience with spas to verify that - though a faint recollection of kiwis burning on his eyes has him shuddering - and he purses his lips in thought. “Go on, put it on! It’s really not that hard, Mark.”

The chapstick feels heavy in his palm, and for some reason he can’t bring himself to open it. She’s right - it would be so easy to just put it on, and then he and Amy could get back to what they were doing before, but there’s some sort of barrier there. Something keeping him from just _opening it_.

“I’ve never done this before, Ames.” 

"Oh my god - okay, open your mouth.” He does, but apparently it’s not good enough because she grabs his chin and pulls it forward a little, demonstrating on her own face how he should “properly” open his mouth. “No, no you’re, like, pulling your lips _in_. I need them out, please.”

So he tries to push them out, somehow, and even though the position feels weird and uncomfortable and Amy’s clearly not satisfied with it, she opens the chapstick anyway.

It faintly reminds him of the few times she had applied makeup on him - all for videos, of course - and the thought makes the chapstick feel just a little heavier on his skin.

“There,” she murmurs, pulling away from him again. She swipes her thumb along the corner of his mouth, erasing some invisible smudge, and laughs at the way he presses his lips together to get used to the feeling of something on them. “Not so hard, right? I can’t believe I had to help you apply fucking _chapstick_.”

Ignoring the way it sparks a funny feeling in his chest, he shoots back a “hey! I’m just a dumb man, I wouldn’t know how to do any of this!”

Amy laughs, though, so it’s all worth it. And then they’re kissing again, so Mark chalks it up as being _definitely_ worth it and pushes the weird thoughts and preoccupation with the feeling of chapstick on his lips out of his mind.

It’s weeks later when he starts thinking about it again.

One coat of chapstick does not just erase all of the dry skin on his lips forever onwards after applying it once, surprisingly, and the next time he feels his lips getting chapped he immediately starts thinking of the cucumber and mint chapstick in Amy’s drawer.

She was right, after all. It did give off a surprisingly pleasant tingle.

Too bad he didn’t actually _own_ any chapstick.

After he notices it, all he can think about is how chapped his lips are. How his discomfort would be alleviated by the chapstick sitting all alone on the vanity - even more so if he was able to _keep_ it and use it regularly.

Mark keeps licking his lips, every time the thought comes up, to keep himself from asking Amy about it. He already had the nail polish - still glossy on his fingers, if a little chipped - he didn’t _need_ anything else feminine. Not that there was anything wrong with that, of course, and even the notion that items had gender was ludicrous, but…

It just wasn’t for him - he couldn’t pull it off and he just had to deal with that. 

Still, once the idea is in his head he can’t get it _out_. Like there’s an alarm inside of him that only gets louder when he tries to focus on anything else. It’s stupid, considering it’s just fucking chapstick, but obviously Mark doesn’t control his own mind.

Amy makes a comment later that night. They’re eating dinner, and he keeps licking his lips every other bite out of habit, so she raises an eyebrow and wipes her mouth with her napkin, hiding an amused smile.

“Too good for a napkin?”

“What?” He snaps up to look at her, pulling himself out of his daydream. She flicks her eyes to the napkin, and he chuckles nervously. “Oh, yeah. I’m not sure what you mean, though.”

Amy just tilts her head and smiles again. “You keep licking your lips - what’re you doing?”

He blinks, then takes a bite of his food before answering. When he tells her she’s going to tease him mercilessly, both for his prior hesitancy towards chapstick and because he waited this long to say something about it and prove her right. Once the food in his mouth has lost all flavor and turned to suitable mush, he decides to just bite the bullet. “Oh - they’re just a little, uh, chapped…”

“Why are you acting like you’re revealing some embarrassing secret?” Amy asks, still smiling around her fork.

And - it sure _felt_ like he was admitting an embarrassing secret. He wasn’t supposed to want chapstick, or the small little thrill he felt when applying it. But he doesn’t want to admit that to Amy, so he settles on the next best thing.

“Felt a little like you were gonna rip into me for it -” her face falls in confusion, and he backtracks “- like, in a teasing way. Because I gave you a hard time the first time.”

“Oh.” She takes another bite of her dinner and clears her throat. “No, I know your fragile masculinity couldn’t take it.”

It’s supposed to be a joke. It’s supposed to be lighthearted, and funny, and they’re both supposed to laugh it off and move on.

But there’s that word again - masculinity, man, male, _he_ \- that makes his skin feel wrong on his body, makes him feel just a little _weird_ in a way he can’t describe. Just a little itchy, a little off.

Still, he’s supposed to laugh, so he does.

“Would you like to have one of mine?” Amy asks a little later. Mark has half a mind to give some half-assed excuse, some reasoning that he, a man, couldn’t possibly have _chapstick_ , but she carries on. “I have loads more, anyway - what’s one tube, you know?”

“Are you sure?” The question is out before he’s really processed it, and he kind of wishes he hadn’t said anything at all when a small spark of glee alights in his chest at the thought of having his own tube.

“Of course! Go pick one out - any of them are fine.”

It’s a small walk from the kitchen table to the bedroom, but it feels like ages. There’s still a nagging feeling in the back of his mind, though, that this is _wrong_ \- that he’s doing something bad for wanting a tube of fucking chapstick.

To ignore the fact that it’s still probably his weird hang up on “feminine” versus “masculine” items, he rationalizes it as simply feeling like he’s stealing from Amy (even though she encouraged it) and moves on.

Taking it from the drawer is, just like the nail polish, surprisingly easy. The various plastic tubes throw him off, just a little bit (who needed that much chapstick?), but finding the light green cucumber and mint one takes no more than a second.

He briefly considers at least trying one of the others - they all deserved a fair shot, after all - but brushes it off when he realizes he could just as easily try them again later.

And - woah, where did _that_ come from? Mark pauses, looking away from the chapstick where he had been zoning out and making eye contact with himself in the mirror. This was a one-time thing. Just one tube of chapstick. Just so Amy didn’t get upset when they kissed and he wouldn’t have to keep licking his lips anymore. He wasn’t going to _keep_ doing this.

Reassured, he opens the chapstick, and positions his mouth the way Amy showed him to.

For some reason, he thought it’d be more noticeable. It’s not a stark contrast to his normal wear, like the polish was - there’s a slight sheen to his lips and nothing more.

Still, the shine is all he needs for an uncontrollable smile to spread across his face, and he lets out a little giggle at the sheer absurdity of it all.

It’s - it’s nice. It’s really nice.

It makes him feel pretty. Knowing that the chapstick is there, even if no one else would notice it. Enough that he doesn’t even care he’s getting that same, euphoric fluttery feeling in his chest over the word “pretty.”

Still smiling, he quickly moves the chapstick over to his side of the dresser - the one that’s _painfully_ bare, and stands it upright in the center, like it’s a trophy he’s won. (A small part of him does feel like it’s a trophy - a reward for him getting over that hurdle, the little bump in the road.)

From then on his collection only grows.

It starts when he finds himself in the cosmetics aisle again. He had zoned out while roaming the store, waiting for Amy to regroup with him after she had gotten what she needed, and it’s really no surprise when he ends up here, what with the frequent visits in the past month or so and all.

A small lip balm section stands out to him - granted, it’s bright red and the letters are bigger than any other section in that aisle, so it’s a little impossible to ignore - and he skims over the brands before he’s even realized what he’s doing.

He has one at home. He doesn’t need any more.

But then a bright red one claims that it’s candy-flavored, so it’s really not his fault that he grabs it and takes a closer look. He’s just checking that it’s actually cherry, is all - it could even work for a video! The idea is the final nail in the coffin he needs to start picking up more.

There’s only five that really stand out to him (even though five is a very large number in this context): the red cherry one, a yellow one with small cartoon bees and honey pots on it, a soda-flavored one, an orange-flavored one, and a small tube with skittles packaging. He’s not _exactly_ sure what the skittles packaging is supposed to imply, to be fair, but he’s sure as hell excited to find out. 

(If that excitement stems from a more personal place and need to feel pretty again, rather than the notion that he’s buying it for a video he knows will never really happen, then we don't have to talk about it.)

When he meets back up with Amy, all he says about the random tubes of lip balm is a rushed “video idea,” and she thankfully takes that at face-value and places the plastic containers on the conveyor belt without another word.

It isn’t until a few hours later when he actually tries them on, though.

He tries not to, at first - tries to just put them away for a rainy day, keep them safe and out of sight for a bit, but just like before it never works, and he finds himself unable to think of anything but the feeling of the chapstick on his lips.

Sure, they were for a video, but it couldn’t hurt to put at least one on beforehand, right? He could always just act out a reaction onscreen. 

Once the idea is in his mind it's hard to let go, so he opens up the cherry one, a little surprised to find that the actual chapstick is red, too, before hastily applying it.

And… It’s not _great_ , but it’s not terrible, either. It’s certainly not as smooth as the one Amy gave him, and it didn’t have that same tingle, but it was fine, he supposed. It's actually kind of sticky, if he’s being honest, but it does the job well enough.

So he moves over to the mirror, just to see if he can see the shine, and stops.

There was a faint red tint to it - not something you’d notice in the right lighting, but Mark immediately zeros in on it, almost entranced with the color. If he thought the light shine of the other chapstick was pretty, than this is downright amazing.

The fluttery feeling rushes through him, filling him with a crackling energy he shakes out through his hands, and another slow smile spreads on his face. 

Fuck, it's pretty. 

He plays around with it for a bit - moving his mouth in different ways just to see the overhead light reflect off of it - and decides that he really, really likes it. The red compliments his skin tone, after all. 

Smiling once again, his tongue darts out to lick his lips out of habit, and he winces at the taste. It is most certainly _not_ cherry flavored, but that's fine. The fuzzy warmth it plants in his chest makes up for that and the weird stickiness tenfold. 

Pressing his lips together, he relishes in the way the faint red stands out to him, and giggles just to let some of the overwhelming glee he was feeling out. 

Of course, Mark notes with a bitter sigh, he could never wear this around someone else. It's too noticeable.

... But that doesn't mean he can't wear it for himself. 

And with that thought, he smiles again, eyes trained on how the red shifts with the lighting. Yeah, he can wear this for himself. It's too pretty not to. 

Content in a way he hasn't been for a while, he carefully closes the chapstick and puts it away, moving on to finish up some work he had been neglecting with nothing but the sticky feeling on his lips to keep him going.


	3. pronouns

Pronouns have always been such a strange thing to him. 

He’s never been one to get hung up on them - to sneer at someone who used “she” by accident, or titter nervously when someone mistakenly called him a girl. Maybe it’s his privilege seeping through - the fact that he’s never had to fight to be seen as what he is, or his masculine features keeping everyone from seeing anything _but_ a “he.” That’s how he explains it to himself, anyway.

But after experiencing the weird, fluttery joy that came with chapstick and nail polish, he’s realizing that it’s awfully similar to the rare, somehow mildly pleasant discomfort he feels when someone mistakes him for someone else.

It’s starting to happen more, with the longer hair and all, and the feeling’s getting harder to ignore. 

Obviously, it’s still not a regular occurrence - with his broad shoulders, athletic frame, and friends who _will_ chuckle awkwardly when someone misgenders him, people tend to get his pronouns right. But he kind of wishes it was. 

Just to experiment. Just to analyze what that weird feeling is and push it aside. 

And he’s always been a fairly experimental person - always willing to try new things, just to say that he did before shucking them to the side forever, so it’s really not a surprise when he ends up hurtling down an internet rabbit hole about pronouns and the different kinds and “trying things on,” so to speak. 

Which leads him to the website he’s on now.

Rubbing a tired hand down his face, he clicks on the link, watching a tiny new tab open among all of the other tiny tabs he had accumulated over the course of this research project of his. _Pronoun Dressing Room_ stares back at him in pretty cursive font, and he wonders how the hell he ended up here. 

Letting out a weary (and somewhat apprehensive, though he’ll never admit it) sigh, he slowly fills out his information in the little side bar that appears, entering in his name and pronouns on autopilot before reaching the bright purple _Try it on!_ button. 

Right, he was supposed to be experimenting. 

Looking around the room as though someone would jump out of the walls and catch him in the middle of some heinous crime, he carefully angles the computer screen toward himself, shielding it from nothing and no one. 

There was no reason to be so paranoid, he was _just_ experimenting, and then he’d let this go forever. Nothing more. 

Slowly, like he _was_ committing some heinous crime, he deletes the information he had entered, watching the cursor blink for a minute before typing in she, her, hers. 

He almost filled out the _Type of person_ box with “girl” reflexively, before stopping himself. 

He wasn’t a girl. That was ludicrous. Ridiculous. Unfathomable. 

His masculinity restored with the small reality check, he enters in “boy” and clicks the button. 

Reading the little blurbs the site provided… honestly doesn’t do much. It doesn’t feel like the paragraphs were talking about _him_ (her?) as was the point of the site - it feels more like a place to practice using unfamiliar pronouns, like the ones supplied underneath the _Pick your Pronouns_ section. 

So he closes the tab. And then clears it out of his search history, just in case. 

But he’s _still_ curious, because of course he is, he’s never been one to quit in the middle of a project, so he turns to his backup plan (the one that he kind of hoped to god he’d never have to use), and heads to the kitchen in search of Amy. 

This is probably a terrible idea. 

But to be fair, he’s drank his own piss before, so terrible ideas are kind of his thing.

“Hey,” he greets once he’s in the kitchen, stepping around where she’s busied herself with a small bowl of mac ‘n’ cheese and reaching for the bread. “How are you?” 

“I’ve been, y’know, just chilling.” She slides out of his way when he reaches for the cabinet above her, and he thanks her with a gentle kiss to her head. “What’s up with you? You’ve been in there all day.” 

Mark stiffens at the reminder, and then forces himself to stop holding so much tension in his shoulders to try and hide the discomfort the reminder brings. It doesn’t work, judging by the way she rests a hand on his back, hot and heavy and grounding between his shoulder blades, and he forces himself to relax more.

Just a bit more, though. He still feels like a raggedy jolly chimp force-fed cocaine and wound up so tight his chest is starting to crush itself, but it’s okay. He’s okay. 

Amy starts rubbing small circle into his back - something she only does when she’s picked up on the fact that he’s either not mentally all there, about to break the fuck down, or a mixture of both, and he desperately tries to picture all of his anxieties floating away like balloons or something.

Balloons that will probably fuck up some poor little animal’s day. 

He’s not very good at this whole self-calming thing.

Taking a deep breath, he tries again. It’s not weird, he tries to remind himself. It’s just an experiment. Nothing more than an experiment. No strings attached, nothing to even be weird _about_. 

It works, marginally, and he finally shifts a little bit towards her. Her hand stops rubbing circles.

“I’ve, uh, been doing some research,” he admits, looking anywhere but her. He doesn’t think she would have a problem with it, obviously, but it’s… still a little weird. Even for him, and it’s _his_ idea. Before he can overthink it again, he shakes out his hands and closes the cabinet. “Can I ask you a favor?” 

Amy passes him over with a critical eye, but nods nonetheless. “Sure, go for it.” 

“Do you - do you think you could use she/her for me? For a bit. I’m trying something.” The words tumble out of him, quick and uneven, and he still can’t muster up the courage to look her in the eye. Especially when a thick silence falls between them.

“It’s not a gender thing!” He (she) explains, chuckling nervously. “It’s - an experiment. Just… Just to -”

Whatever bullshit explanation he’s about to give is cut off by a gentle hand on his jaw, and he lets his head be turned to face Amy again. “Hey,” she whispers, not unlike the voice she uses when consoling a particularly tightly-wound Ethan, and he relaxes marginally more into her touch. “It’s okay - gender thing or not -”

“It’s not a gender thing.” 

She nods slowly, like his defense is only making her believe him _less_ somehow, and smiles. “Okay, not a gender thing, that’s okay. Of course I’ll use she/her for you.” 

Mark nods back and leans into the hand on her face, smiling timidly. “Thanks,” she mutters, and Amy laughs. 

“It’s not a big thing to change, anyway. Anything to make you comfortable.” Patting her cheek gently, she goes back to her bowl of mac ‘n’ cheese and groans when she realizes it’s cold.

Mark feels a little guilty about that, but it’s mostly masked by the overwhelming joy and nervous excitement that everything went so smoothly, and she has a hard time controlling her antsy grin.

It starts to feel a little more normal after that. Amy doesn’t really have anyone to practice her pronouns on, seeing as they’re mostly alone in the house, but occasionally Mark will catch her talking out loud as she types and referring to her using she/her, or grumbling about the pants she leaves on the floor, and Mark tries to ignore the little fluttery feeling she gets every time she does. 

Unfortunately, her little bubble of comfort is soon popped by Ethan coming over, as it seemingly always is. 

“Hey gamers!” He cries, loudly, as Amy lets him in. Mark peeps her head around the corner of the kitchen wall and stares at the same time as Amy groans. 

“Why do you _always_ have to do that?” Mark whines, finally coming out of the kitchen to greet Ethan properly. “It’s ten in the morning on a Saturday, my neighbors hate you.”

Amy laughs, and nods like this is common knowledge and Mark is not, in fact, making up bullshit on the spot. “Don’t mind -” she starts to say, before turning back to Mark with a worried glance. 

It takes a minute, but the gears in her head finally start to turn, and she realizes with belated horror and the harsh voice of her third grade language arts teacher scolding her that that part of the sentence is usually where the _pronoun_ goes.

“Uh, yeah,” she chokes out, hoping that’s enough to get across what she means without drawing even more attention to the whole situation. Ethan cocks a curious eyebrow, so she figures it doesn’t work much, but Amy gives her a relieved nod anyway. 

“Okay, cool. Don’t mind her, she’s just grumpy because we ran out of something for her protein shake and both of us are too lazy to go out and get it.” Amy rolls her eyes fondly, but Mark’s a little too focused on analyzing each micro-expression flitting across Ethan’s face to see it. 

There’s a brief silence, and then Ethan coughs. “Oh,” he says, slowly. “Uh - s-she?” 

And the shoe finally drops. Mark coughs to hide her flinch, and Amy looks ready to do _something_ (Mark’s not sure what, it’s always a gamble with her, really) before Ethan speaks up again, hands fluttering in front of his chest. “Wait! Wait that came out wrong, sorry. I, uh… Mark…? Is using she now?” 

“It’s not a gender thing,” Mark quickly defends, though she’s not sure what she’s defending _against_ , seeing as gender hasn’t even been mentioned, and almost misses the way Amy says it at the same time. Her’s sounds a little more amused, though, and the look she shares with Ethan has something… weird, curling in her stomach. “It’s _not!_ I’m just… experimenting.” 

“Right,” Ethan says, nodding eerily similar to the way Amy nodded when she first told her, and smiles timidly. “It’s not a gender thing. That’s totally cool, du - uh, Mark.” 

“You can say dude,” Mark shoots back, a little too hot and defensive to be completely casual. “I’m - I’m still a dude. Not a girl or something.” 

“Right,” Ethan says again, like that’s all he knows how to say in this situation. It’s fair, honestly - it’s not every day that a friend asks you to switch pronouns while still being strangely adamant about being a dude - so Mark cuts him a little slack. “Uh... movie time?” 

Finally reentering the conversation, even if it’s a little bit stilted and uncomfortable, Amy nods. “Yeah! I think Mark was just finishing up the popcorn and then we should be good, right? I got the blankets on the couch.” Mark nods quickly, making a mental note to absolutely shower Amy in affection later to thank her for salvaging this whole fiasco, and moves back into the kitchen to finish seasoning the popcorn. 

It’s probably cold by now. That sucks.

They fall back into a comfortable routine, after that. Ethan immediately flops back onto the couch and bundles up in the blankets, complaining that their house is too cold just like always. Amy laughs at his antics and somehow manages to wrangle two blankets from him, which she drapes over her and Mark. Unsurprisingly, this whole power struggle over blankets doesn’t matter _anyway_ , because halfway through the movie Ethan somehow finds himself inside their blanket bundle as well, pressed up against Amy and reaching into Mark’s lap for the popcorn. 

The scene is so familiar and comforting that Mark takes another mental note to analyze the reason why later. 

“So,” Ethan starts, almost immediately when the credits start to roll, like he had been sitting on this particular thought for a little while, “how did the whole she/her thing come up?” 

Mark shrugs jerkily, studying the screen like she truly cares who played background cashier number four. “I dunno. Realized I’ve never really been against people using pronouns other than, like, he/him for me. Decided to kinda… experiment with using she/her to see if I’d get uncomfortable with it after a while since most other people seem to.” Amy hums at that, the little noise a mixture between understanding and inquisitive, and rests a hand on her thigh. “Why d’you ask?”

It’s a stupid question, of course. Anyone would be curious if their very masculine, man, male friend wanted to use she/her out of nowhere. But Ethan answers anyway. “Oh, that’s cool. I was just a little curious - I didn’t mean to pry. So is it just the pronouns, or do you want, like…” His face pinches, and he makes vague gestures until Amy somehow picks up on his spontaneous new language and laughs. 

“Feminine titles, kinda, I think he means. Like, you’re my girlfriend instead of my boyfriend.” 

“Oh.” Mark tries to ignore the flush that spreads on her cheeks like an invasive species and clears her throat. “Uh, no. No, it’s… boyfriend and stuff’s fine.” 

It feels a little wrong, to admit, in all honesty. She kind of liked the idea of being someone’s girlfriend.

But then the implications of that thought hit her and she has the idea she’s doing a very poor job at hiding out how much she freaks out about that. 

“Mark?” Amy asks, hand on her thigh immediately moving to her knee and rubbing soothing circles. Again. “Are you okay?” 

She nods quickly, probably a little too quickly, fuck, and lets out a long, shaky breath to try and calm herself down. “Yeah, yeah, I’m… good. Sorry. I don’t know what that was.” 

Ethan tilts his head, but says nothing and places his hand on her shoulder. “That’s okay,” he murmurs, thankfully not pressing anymore for the source of the unexpected panic. “Do you… Do you want to keep using she/her? It’s cool if you do!” 

Mark pauses for a moment, pretending to think _really hard_ about the answer to stay true to the whole “experiment” explanation. She knows the truth based on the small flutter in her chest and her heart stuttering every time she’s heard Amy (and now Ethan) use her pronouns, but appearances are everything. “Yeah,” she finally says, nodding slowly just to really sell the idea that the masculine man she is isn’t _too_ eager to use typically-feminine pronouns. “They’re just… normal? No particular attachment to them, just like he/him.” 

“So would you want to go back to using he/him, too?” Amy asks, leaning closer to her. The question feels like a sucker-punch to the gut, and she actually takes a moment to think about it. 

She wasn’t lying, before, she didn’t mind people calling her “him” or “he,” but… being “her” and “she” felt _so_ much better. It felt… right-er, somehow? Not quite what she’s looking for, still a little like an ill-fitting shirt, but instead of the whole thing being a little too tight and constricting the sleeves are just a little short. So, basically, the answer is a resounding _no_. 

She nods instead. 

It’s not what she meant to say, but some ghost of self-respect (or maybe self-preservation?) seems to have possessed her temporarily, and guided her in the direction of what a masculine cis male would say, like she was. 

“Er, yeah. Sure. He/him’s… fine.” 

It’s… not her most convincing performance. To tell the truth it’s downright shit, but she’s never been very good at lying to those she loves, and Amy squeezes her knee with a poorly-masked concerned look. So. At least she’s not the only one. 

“You don’t have to use he/him if you don’t want to, Mark,” Ethan goads, his hand leaving her shoulder to twist nervously in his lap. “We’re not going to judge.” 

Mark nods at that (they’re doing a lot of nodding today, it seems), and makes a stupid joke to ease the weird tension like she always does. “Not a very manly thing to do, you know.” 

Neither of them say anything to that. Mark feels like bolting straight out of the door, just a little bit. 

“Pronouns aren’t gendered,” Amy eventually counters, looking a little lost in her own head like she’s trying to remember some vague self-help book or educational twitter thread (oxymoronic as the name may be) she had seen. “It’s perfectly… _manly_ , to use them.” 

Ethan seems to agree, because he nods along, again, and places his hand back on her knee. “Whatever you’re comfortable with, du - dude. We support you.”

The sentiment holds a lot more value than she thought it would, and Mark allows herself to let out a slow, shaky breath as the unexpected weight takes a nice spot on her sternum, settling in between her lungs and crushing them in the process. “Thank you,” she murmurs, hand dazedly reaching down to cup over Ethan’s, which is still resting on her knee. “That - that means a lot to me.”

“Of course, bubs,” Amy assures, rubbing her hand back and forth now like she’s trying to warm the skin there from some frigid draft. It’s strangely comforting, in a way that only Amy can be. “We love you!”

Instead of answering, she just swallows thickly, emotions she’s not very familiar or comfortable with bubbling up into her chest, only increasing the pressure from Ethan’s words and rising into her throat, leaving her with a painful lump there and a stinging behind her eyes. The two of them both coo, so she figures they know how she feels, and she shakes her head as though to try and clear some of the stuffiness accumulating there.

There’s still… a lot, to question. Why she liked the pronouns so much, why she liked the idea of being referred to as Amy’s girlfriend, why this means so much to her. But Ethan and Amy are providing a good enough distraction as any, so she pushes the thoughts back into the dark recesses of her mind and locks them up tight, briefly imaging pushing an old dusty box over the edge of a cliff as her over-dramatic nature is wont to do, and settles in tight for another day of hanging out with her two favorite people. She’ll deal with everything later. Totally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi !! Whoo, so sorry for the delay on this one, Yikes
> 
> Anyway, I hope I'm not. Rushing anything by adding in the Pronoun Struggle™ too soon lmao  
> I just figured it was kinda time? idk, maybe I am too early
> 
> But. it was getting hard to use he/him when this mark's like. Solidly she/her in my mind now KJGSFJ 
> 
> anyway anyway, thank you all so fucking much for all of your sweet comments on this fic holy hell??? They bring me. So much joy and make my heart to doki doki Constantly  
> I appreciate them so much, and cry happy tears every time I see them. Thank you So Much holy shit  
> hopefully soon I'll be able to respond to all of them oh my gosh


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